Hector Berlioz · section 2 of 67

Foreword by Richard Strauss

Foreword

When I was asked by the publishers to enlarge and revise the “Treatise on Instrumentation” by Hector Berlioz, I thought at first that the masterwork of the great Frenchman did not need such help to be even today a source of enjoyment and stimulation for all musicians. It appeared to me complete in itself and full of ingenious visions, whose realization by Richard Wagner is obvious to every connoisseur.

Upon closer study, however, I could not help noticing the gaps in this work, completed in the middle of the last century. I became aware of the danger that important parts of Berlioz’ work might be considered obsolete and that its lasting value might therefore be overlooked, especially since many other excellent books had developed the subject in the meantime with scientific accuracy (particularly the textbook on instrumentation by the outstanding Belgian authority, Gevaert).

Berlioz was the first to arrange and organize this complicated subject with the supreme industry of a collector. Yet the everlasting value of his work lies in the fact that he not only treated questions of mechanics, but stressed above all the esthetic aspects of orchestral technique. These permanent qualities in the work and its prophetic power, which in a few lines often gives the careful reader a vision of the whole Wagner, may justify this revision. To keep Berlioz’ work alive even for the superficial reader, it was necessary to supplement technical details and to point out new achievements, especially in Wagner’s work.

The respect for Berlioz’ completely unified masterwork demanded that nothing be changed in his text (with the sole exception of the chapter on the organ, which was partly revised and enlarged by Prof. Ph. Wolfrum in accordance with latest developments). My additions are indicated by an undulating line at the side of the text. There is always an abundance of material for musical examples; hence I have avoided important and interesting examples which were quoted by Gevaert. Gevaert’s book contains so much worth reading concerning the technique and acoustics of instruments that I should urgently recommend its study in addition to Berlioz’ work.

In the art of instrumentation, as in other arts, the question of theoretical books is highly problematic. I claim that a musician with talent for composition, who plays the violin or some wind instrument in an orchestra, will have more skill in instrumentation (without any knowledge of its theory) than the equally gifted pianist or music critic who has diligently studied textbooks, but has never come closer to orchestral instruments than the first row of a concert hall.

Therefore, if the student wants to achieve more in the art of instrumentation than just writing a few pleasant-sounding pieces (“excellently scored”, as our critics would call them), and if he has no opportunity to conduct an orchestra and be in daily contact with its magic powers, then he should not only study the scores of the great masters, but above all ask instrumentalists of all kinds to familiarize him with the exact technique of their instruments and with the timbre of their registers. He should, so to speak, try to find out the secrets of the orchestra tuning-room. There are improvements which an inventive player may have discovered for his mouthpiece, for the ‘arrangement of the valves, for other details in the construction or the material of his instrument, technical tricks, devised in an idle hour for the player’s own amusement. All this may open unexpected vistas to a creator in search of new forms of expression for new ideas. It may be more valuable for progress than any treatise which is primarily based on the achievements of the past.

Thus, the practical instrumentalist, through his skill, stimulates the composer to new ideas. Great ideas, on the other hand, which at first do not seem feasible, gradually lift the ambitious instrumentalist to their level. They have had the greatest influence on progress in the construction of instruments, on improvements in their technique, and on the enrichment of their expressive possibilities.

The development of the orchestra until the appearance of Berlioz is sufficiently known and need not detain us here too long. I should like to refer the reader to Richard Wagner’s magnificent interpretations in his writings, especially in “Opera and Drama”. It would not be appropriate to try to cover here in a few lines a great chapter in the history of music and to show in detail and with all its fine articulations an organic development which was influenced by thousands of seeds, stimuli, mistakes and successes. All I can venture to give here is a brief, compressed survey. I trust the sympathetic reader will understand my intention: not to offer an esthetic system, cleanly divided into separate categories like so many drawers, but simply to develop certain important points, leaving it to the educated reader to fill in the connecting details with the help of his own knowledge and of his feelings. With this reservation, I should like to follow the two main roads of orchestral development from Handel, Gluck and Haydn to Wagner. I might be permitted to call them in brief the symphonic ( polyphonic) and the dramatic (homophonic) roads.

The origin of the symphonic orchestra is to be found mainly in Haydn’s and Mozart’s string quartets (as well as in Bach’s organ fugues). The symphonic works of these two masters reveal in their style, in their themes, melodies and figurations the character of the string quartet with all its polyphonic possibilities. One might almost call them string quartets with obbligato wood-wind and noise instruments to reinforce the tutti (French horns, trumpets, kettledrums).

In spite of the greater number of wind instruments used in his Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, even Beethoven cannot hide the mark of chamber music. In Beethoven, more than in Haydn and Mozart, the spirit of the piano injects its characteristic elements— the same spirit which later completely dominates Schumann’s and Brahms’ orchestral works (unfortunately, not always to their advantage or to the listener's enjoyment). Only Liszt with his instinct for tone colors succeeded in filling this spirit of the piano in the orchestra with new poetic life.

The beautiful melodic contours of the four equally important parts in the classical string quartet attained their highest freedom, worthy of Bach’s choral polyphony, in Beethoven’s last ten quartets. There is none of this freedom in Beethoven’s nine symphonies. But Wagner found in it the style for his “Tristan” and “Meistersinger” orchestra; he owes to it the unheardof, miraculous sounds of his string quintet.

It should be added, of course, that the melodic development from Haydn to Beethoven automatically raised the technical demands upon the orchestra and stimulated coloristic effects alien to the style of chamber music. Thus the orchestra approached more and more the second road of development, which we have already named the dramatic one.

Handel and Haydn, as well as Gluck in his operas, consciously stressed the coloristic elements in their predominantly homophonic style (which our dear, easygoing opera audiences even today prefer to polyphony). It was their aim to reinforce poetry and stage by the expressive forces of the orchestra. This transformed the choir of instruments gradually into sensitive groups and finally into “speaking” individuals.

The subjects chosen by the composers of the Romantic School, especially Weber (in “Freischuetz”, “Oberon”, “Euryanthe”), led to further discoveries in this direction. The genius of Richard Wagner finally achieved a synthesis of the two directions. He combined the symphonic (polyphonic) technique of composition and orchestration with the rich expressive resources of the dramatic (homophonic) style.

Hector Berlioz’ aim may have been the same. At the risk of being misunderstood, one might say in short that he was not dramatic enough for the stage, and not symphonic enough for the concert hall. Still, in his attempt to combine stage and concert hall he discovered new and splendid expressive resources for the orchestra. To be sure, he failed to justify his use of dramatic effects in symphonic works by coining his ideas in a dramatic form é which is impossible without rich polyphony) : his works were always lyric or epic. But he was the first to derive his inspiration consistently from the character of the orchestral instruments. Endowed with a special gift for conceiving new combinations of sound, he discovered many new coloristic possibilities and subtle shadings.

No doubt this bold innovator, so ingenious in blending colors, this real creator of the modern orchestra had no feeling at all for polyphony. We do not know whether he was acquainted with the polyphonic mysteries of J. S. Bach’s miraculous scores. But it is certain that his, musically speaking, somewhat primitive sense of melody lacked the understanding for polyphony, the culmination of musical genius, which we admire in Bach’s cantatas, in Beethoven’s last quartets, in the poetic construction of the third act of “Tristan”, as the highest emanation of an unrestrained melodic wealth. And only truly meaningful polyphony can disclose the loftiest tone-miracles of the orchestra.

A score with awkward or just indifferent inner parts and basses will rarely lack a certain harshness; it will never have the brilliant sonority of a piece in which the second wind instruments, the second violins, violas, violoncelli and basses also take part in the soulful enunciation of beautifully curved melodic lines. This is the secret of the wonderful tone-poetry in the scores of “Tristan” and ‘‘Meistersinger’ as well as of the “Siegfried Idyll”, which was written for “small orchestra”. On the other hand, even Berlioz’ orchestral dramas, constructed with such mastery of sound, as well as Weber’s and Liszt’s scores show by the brittleness of their colors that the choir of accompanying and filling parts was not deemed worthy of melodic independence by the composer; (and each of these masters was, in his way, a great instrumental poet and interpreter of orchestral colors). Hence the conductor cannot achieve that spiritual participation of all parts in the whole which is indispensable for producing a uniformly warm sound.

The superiority of Wagner, who perfected the modern orchestra, over Berlioz, who created it, is usually said to consist exclusively in the more profound meaning of his poetic and musical ideas. Yet there are three technical points which should be stressed (of course with reasonable reservations), for they are the basis for the perfection of Wagner’s ideas in the modern orchestra: first, the employment of the richest polyphonic style; secondly, the accomplishment of this through the invention and introduction of the valve horn; thirdly, taking over the virtuoso technique of the solo-concerto for all instruments of the orchestra (Beethoven already required this in his last string quartets, but not in his symphonies).

Thus, Richard Wagner’s scores are the alpha and omega of my additions to this work; they embody the only important progress in the art of instrumentation since Berlioz. But I must warn the student to approach this study with great caution. Generally the score of “Lohengrin” should be considered a basic textbook for the advanced student; only after studying it thoroughly may he proceed to the polyphony of “Meistersinger” and “Tristan”, and to the fairy-tale world of the “Ring”. Esthetically, the treatment of the wind instruments in “Lohengrin” is the apex.of true perfection, never before reached. The so-called third wood wind (English horn and bass clarinet), added for the first time, are employed here in manifold combinations of sound. The second, third and fourth horns, the trumpets and trombones have already attained polyphonic independence. The doubling of melodic parts, so characteristic for Wagner, is used with a sure sense for tonal balance and for beauty of sound, which even today arouses deep admiration. I particularly recommend the study of the scene between Ortrud and Telramund at the beginning of the second act; the wonderful wood-wind passage when Elsa appears on the terrace; the Procession to the Minster; and the end of the second act, where Wagner succeeds in drawing organ sounds from the orchestra, which even surpass the “king of the instruments”.

But before the beginner in the technique of composition and instrumentation starts his first timid swimming exercises in the stormy sea of the orchestra, he must be warned against oné danger: the phenomenal sound combinations which a Berlioz or Wagner drew from the orchestra must not be misused. These masters used them for giving expression to unheard-of, great, poetic ideas, feelings and pictures of nature; they must not be reduced to the common property of bunglers, like a child’s toy. I wish it were possible to force everybody desirous of attempting orchestral composition to start his career with a number of string quartets. These string quartets he:should have to submit to the judgment of two violinists, a violist and a cellist. If the four instrumentalists declare, “yes, this is well set for the instruments”, then the disciple of the muses may follow his impulse to write for orchestra (at first preferably for a small one). Finally, when the “young master” can no longer contain his urge for the large orchestra, he should compare Wagner’s eleven scores with each other. Let him observe how each of these works has its own combination of instruments, its own orchestral style; how each says

what it wants to say in the simplest possible way, and how this noble moderation in the use of means is to be found in all of them. On the other hand, let him be warned against the procedure of one modern composer who once showed me the score of a comedy overture, in which the four “Nibelung” tubas carried on a most lively dance with the rest of the brass— simply as reinforcement of the tutti. Dismayed, I asked the author—otherwise an excellent, highly educated musician—what business the tubas had in this gay overture. Had not Wagner really “invented” them with such wisdom and sure imagination to depict the somber world of the Nibelungs? He answered quite innocently: “Why, nowadays every major orchestra has tubas; why should I not use them?” That silenced me; this man was beyond help.

Berlin, Christmas 1904. Richard Strauss

Instrumentation